Plethora of Posts & Pictures!

Yesterday marked my 500th blog post and to think I forgot to announce it…silly me!  I didn’t want to miss my 500th post so for a week I’ve been counting down on my laptop until my 500th post!  Go figure, with the plethora of computers in my house, I didn’t use my laptop and yet one of our desktops….missing the big  5-0-0.  *sigh* what’s a girl to do….post about it today I suppose! 

Over the past couple of years, I’ve had a plethora of posts!  My top 3 blogging topics are:

1. My niece Madison – with 102 posts
2. My cousin and one of my BFF’s Jaime – with 89 posts
3. Tied for 3rd with 85 posts – My niece Emmalee and favorite 2nd family the Munro’s!

One of my favorite things about blogging is getting to go back and look at past posts!  It’s a great reminder to me of what I’ve done, where I’ve been and where I hope to go!!

Yesterday, I blogged briefly on my Aunt Sue’s wedding, and posted a couple of pictures, but mentioned that I had a plethora of pictures to sort through, 521 of them to be exact, to still go through.  I’m so proud of myself, in less then 24-hours I:

• downloaded & edited all the photos off the cameras
• uploaded all the wedding photos to Snapfish for people to order from,
• put them on a CD for my Aunt to take home with her
• made a montage of the wedding! 

Phew!  That’s quite the plethora of photography related items, in a short period of time, for me! 

With all that being said here is the wedding montage I made of the plethora of photos that we took yesterday!  Since I know that I know that the majority of my biggest blog fans and followers are my family, here you go…I hope you enjoy the video!!  Congratulations Sue & Aaron, I love you guys!!

 

Week 3 of Word Up, Yo! a new  word game hosted by Liz from A Belle, A Bean, & A Chicago Dog, KLZ from Taming Insanity and Natalie from Mommy of A Monster!  The word this week was PLETHORA, jump in and play along!!

 

 

A Day At the Farm!

Anyone who knows me at all knows that I am far from a nature/outdoorsy girl, so our adventure yesterday was a tad bit out of my comfort zone!  But I had been invited by a local nannies group to come join them for a play date, so I figured it would be a fun outing with the triplets.  I didn’t really want to have all the fun on my own (ha-ha), so I talked Amy into coming along with Camryn and Jordyn, she happily agreed and we all went!

It didn’t start out so great…Gabbi was petrified of the animals and the boys were also afraid but not nearly as bad as Gabbi.  Luckily the boys warmed up quickly, Gabbi it took a bit longer, but by the end all three were loving the farm!

I took some video and a ton of photos, so I made a montage of our trip to the farm, so check it out!  Ignore my stern “no” in the first video, lol!

         

I have to admit it, I had fun, the kids had fun and it wore them out so they napped well!  I can’t complain at all!  Thanks Amy for coming along with us and Amanda from Eastside Professional Nannies for inviting us to join her group at the farm!  We’ll definitely have to do it again, the kids all had fun!

Maddie’s T-Ball Game

Yesterday, I finally got the opportunity to see Maddie play t-ball!  Her team is made up of 3 and 4 year olds and boy is it cute!!  I took video of the game yesterday to share!  I have to say, Maddie is a natural, guess we know where she gets the athleticism from…yours truly…the extreme athlete ;)

Take a look and tell me what you think!

Hope you had a wonderful weekend, Monday tomorrow…yuck!

 

Alex’s Piano Arrives!

The movers arrived last night, two days early, boy were we surprised and excited!!  Check out the montage I made of the process of moving it in!  *Note: the photo quality isn’t that great, most of it was taken on my dad’s cell phone!*

            

Alex’s has already been playing up a storm on it!!  She is so excited to have this piano!  If you haven’t had a chance to hear Alex perform you’ll have to ask her!  She’s amazing!  If you click HERE you can listen to Alex’s piano recital in January 2008!

Texas Vacation 2010

I did it, I completed my Texas Vacation 2010 video/montage this evening!  I think it turned out pretty well, if I do pat myself on the back!  The music was chosen from friends on Facebook, I asked them “When you think of TEXAS what songs come to mind? Need to add music to my Texas video!” and got a plethora of answers!  What a fun way to pick the music, I know I couldn’t have chosen better songs….well maybe the last one, that was one off of the One True Media site I use to make the montages!  I was short by a minute, and didn’t feel like finding another song!

Without further ado, my Texas Vacation 2010 video/montage…. enjoy!

If you missed out on my blogging during the trip, please check out HERE to see more information, insight and photos!

Okay, I need to get to sleep.  I have card counting in the morning from the Toys & Togs Sale.  So tomorrow night I should have numbers to share!  Then tomorrow evening I fly out to Spokane to meet up with Julia and the kids for the week.  They arrived today and I got this fun text from Julia about 8pm tonight…

Not sure u can tell how huge and great this room is....2 pac n plays on far walls...w\2 comfy reading chairs ..desk and chair...2 double beds...wish bathroom was bigger but oh well! ;)

I can’t wait for tomorrow I love staying in hotels, and this one sounds really nice!  However, like I said, I should probably get to bed asap, it’ll be here before I know it!  Good night!

Bowling with the Munro’s

On Saturday night we went bowling after going out to dinner at a yummy Chinese Restaurant!  Julia & I weren’t exactly sure how it was going to go, but amazingly we all managed to finish an entire game…10 frames…and had fun!! 

I made a video montage of the event showing each of the kids taking a turn!  It was pretty funny to watch them!!   

 

 

Fun activity and the kids want to go back soon!! 

 

1 Month, 1 Month!!

One month from today at this exact moment, our bus (yes private BUS, we have 11 people with their two-weeks of luggage do get to the airport) will have picked up my family from Grandma’s house and we’ll be in route to the airport heading to our Caribbean cruise!!  We’ve been waiting for this trip to get here since December 20, 2008, when Grandma surprised us all! 

I thought in honor of our 1 month countdown, I’d share some of the favorite professional photos from the two cruises I’ve been on! 

Cruise #1 ~ February 11-25, 2006

We went on this trip the month before Jaime gave birth to Madison, so *sniff sniff* they didn’t get to come along.  But…we had fun without them!  We left and returned from Fort Lauderdale and circled the Caribbean, we traveled approximately 4,194 miles!

#1: Fort Lauderdale ~ Princess Cays (we didn’t get to go due to weather) ~ Tortola ~ Antigua ~ Dominica ~ Martinique ~ Barbados ~ Grenada ~ Bonaire ~ Aruba ~ Grand Caymans ~ Fort Lauderdale

Our ship, the Sea Princess

Our family boarding the boat!

Brandi & I “swam” (aka stood on a platform) with dolphins!

 
Formal Night Dinner

 
The Benson Granddaughters

 
Benson Granddaughters and Grandma

Cruise #2 & 3 ~ February 16-March 1, 2008

This cruise for us was considered one cruise, but it technically was two!  We did two different loops of the Caribbean from Puerto Rico to Puerto Rico and then back to Puerto Rico!  We traveled approximately 3,414 miles!

#2: San Juan, Puerto Rico ~ St. Thomas ~  St. Kitts ~ Grenada ~ Bonaire ~ Aruba ~ San Juan, Puerto Rico

#3: San Juan, Puerto Rico ~ Barbados ~ St. Lucia ~ Antigua ~ Tortola ~ St. Thomas ~ San Juan, Puerto Rico

Our Ship, the Crown Princess

Boarding the ship!

 
The Benson Girls

  
The Benson Granddaughters

 
Benson Granddaughters with Grandma

 
My family 

For Christmas last year, Brandi & I made Grandma, my parents and her parents a DVD of pictures and video taken from this cruise!  Its a bit long, but if you get a chance you should watch it!  I did blog about it HERE!

I CANNOT wait until we go!  You can track my ‘waiting progress’ with my ticker on the left sidebar of my blog!!  1 month, 1 month!

Sky High Sports

Wow, what a fun evening we just had!!  We went to Sky High Sports after we heard how much fun Amy, Camryn and Kim had!  This place has wall-to-wall trampolines, so much fun!  Emmalee, Madison, Jaime & I all bounced and Brandi played photographer!  We were happy that they had an “under 8” area where we could bounce along with the girls.  The only bummer is we couldn’t hold Emma and bounce.  I did it twice and got yelled at both times!  But she soon learned how to bounce herself on her hands and knees!

Madison loves to jump in the pit at school so she was excited to jump in the pit there!  The first time we jumped together and then second time we went Maddie wanted to go all by herself!  She then tried to go by herself but Jaime wouldn’t let her, so instead of going with someone watching her she chose not to!  What a goober!

Here’s a cute video of us jumping around and Emma trying to jump!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Tomorrow is Emmalee’s FIRST birthday!  Cannot believe she’s a year old already!!

 

Pumpkin Patch

Yesterday, Aiden & Connor had their fieldtrip to the pumpkin patch at The Plant Farm in Smokey Point!  It is a fantastic pumpkin patch, they have free hayrides, train rides and bouncy houses!   They also have animals to look at and pet!  And of course the pumpkins!
We spent about 3 hours there yesterday doing everything, and of course taking LOTS of pictures!!  We took 315 photos, and it was hard to narrow them down, so I finally decided to just make a montage instead!!  Hope you enjoy it!!

I highly recommend this pumpkin patch if you haven’t gone to one yet!  LOTS of fun!!

Miley Cyrus Concert

Okay, I finally did it, I sat down and did my Miley Cyrus Concert blog post.  There were so many pictures that I dreaded just posting picture after picture on my blog, so i decided to just make a slideshow...the slideshow turned into a new montage.  There are a couple of videos included in the montage, the quality isn't great and parts are dark because they were taken on my camera and not on my video camera, but they were to cute not to include! 
For those of you who didn't know, for Sophia's 7th Birthday back in June, I bought her tickets to see her favorite singer...Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana.  Sophia had to wait 3 months before she was able to actually go see her, so we were really excited when the day finally came!!  To add to the fun (and because I really didn't want to go to the Tacoma Dome all by myself) Brandi and Erin bought tickets and came along with us.
Make sure you turn ON/UP your volume to hear one of my favorite songs right now The Climb by Miley Cyrus.  Hope you enjoy the video/montage!

Happy Belated Birthday, Sophia!  Hope the concert was worth the wait!!

Lake Chelan Video & Mom's AWESOME Talk

Okay I got it done ... here is our Lake Chelan trip ... don't forget volume!!

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

My mom also gave an AMAZING talk in church today...kudos for her!! She had to speak in front of the entire congregation for 15minutes! She did awesome, and the rest of the day I was stopped by people saying what a great job she did! Way to go MOM!!

Happy Easter!

Hope you had a great Easter!  I had an awesome one with my extended family!!  I made a quick (yes, it’s only 6 minutes – that’s quick for me!) video highlighting parts of our Easter!!  Hope you enjoy it!!

Make sure you have your volume turned up!

Disneyland Video!!

Yes, I just finished it and am feeling really proud of it!! No shocker that 90% of it is Miss Madison - but we did go for her...and she's so darn cute!! I hope you enjoy it! We had a lot of fun on this trip!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Oh...today I ran into Melinda & Jon Levey along with Kyra (Max & Emma were at school) at McDonalds and then later on I ran into Debbie Dill, Adam & Abbie at Fred Meyer (Alisa was also in school). I hadn't seen either of those families in a couple of years, so it was crazy to see all of them and in the same day none the less!!

Thanks again Brandi for my new layout! Love it!

Emmalee's First Week

I did it...I finished the video for Emmalee!! I like it and am very proud of it!! Hope you enjoy it...she's such a cutie and such a doll!!

GREAT PLAY

This year for Christmas Jaime requested no toys for Madison, so Brandi and I came up with something really fun...we enrolled her in a session at GREAT PLAY. Great Play is brand new in the area, actually there are only 3 in the country. To me it seems like a mix of Gymboree Play & Music and a Gymnastics Class.

Madison this morning at her first class. Brandi & I enrolled her in a Wednesday morning session since Zak has Wednesdays off, but since Jaime just Emmalee Zak is on paternity leave anyway. Jaime didn't want to take Emmalee to it being only 4 days old - so I got to go along!

I took some pictures and video to show Jaime (and all of you). So enjoy!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

I finally got my Christmas video finished! It took me almost three days of work, but finally got it done! Not overly happy with the music, but I was in a hurry to get it done and don't really care :)

This Christmas brought LOTS of new challenges - SNOW for one thing, WIND, NO POWER and people being stuck because of the snow! This has definitely been a Christmas to remember!

Take a look at A Benson Family Christmas! WARNING it is a bit long...but very silly and enjoyable!!

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Hope you guys all have a HAPPY NEW YEAR! We're having our annual New Years Party, but this year its going to be really small - maybe 10 people. Gone are the days of 40+ people for several days!! *SIGH*! And it's looking like it will just be me, Erin & Alex of 'my' people that will be there! Zak & Jaime aren't sure if they are coming yet - all depends on how Jaime is feeling....so we'll see. If not Erin, Alex & I will have fun on our own!!

My BIG CHRISTMAS SURPRISE .... REVEALED!

Okay, who can forget these three posts where I left you all hanging on WHY I needed that dumb fire wire chord from Radio Shack. Let's take a walk back down memory lane shall we...

Nov.29 -- String of Bad Computer Luck
Nov.30 -- More Computer Bad Luck
Dec.1 -- TMI I'm sure & More Bad Computer Luck w/ a little bit of good mixed in!

So Brandi & I made a 35minute long video of our Caribbean Cruise we went on as a family this past February!! We got it printed & put onto DVDs for gifts for my parents, Brandi's parents and our Grandma! It's long, but if you have time it's definitely funny!! We had several thousands of photos to choose from, but our video options weren't great - but what I can say we're amateur's! Now we know for our next cruise in 2010 what we should focus on!!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

I'm still working on the Christmas one - hopefully I'll get it done soon!

Christmas in Camano - Part II

The past two days we've gotten about 24" of snow - it is just crazy!! Loving the snow! We've had a lot of fun! Yesterday, we finished decorating cookies and then went out and played in the snow. Today we went out shopping to find snow stuff for the boys and then played out in the snow again!! Here's a glimpse into our last 48hours!

Decorating our Christmas Cookies
After each cookie each of the kids would lick there knives and then re-dip again! It was so nice ... not to mention cleanly as well!

Aiden having fun decorating cookies!

Maddie trying her hand at cookie decorating!

Connor working hard!

Julia asked the kids to show her their tongues...which were very GREEN!

Here is a fun video/slideshow of our snow fun yesterday!! Check it out :)

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Tomorrow, Alec is driving me and Maddie home. My mom's car is going to be stuck in Camano for awhile until it thaws out a little bit. But we've had a great visit this past week! LOTS of memories were made, LOTS of cookies were made and LOTS of snow was played in!!